South Korea-US military drill starts as North'S warnings

South Korea-US military drill starts as North rejects armistice with South​

South Korea and the United States launched joint drills on Monday involving thousands of troops, defying North Koreaâ€™s apocalyptic threats to repudiate the 60-year-old Korean War armistice in retaliation.

The start of the two-week â€œKey Resolveâ€ exercise follows a week of escalating tensions on the Korean peninsula, with North Korea lashing out over tightened United Nations (UN) sanctions adopted after its third nuclear test last month.

â€œKey Resolveâ€ is an annual, largely computer-simulated exercise, but still involves the mobilization of over 10,000 South Korean and 3,500 US military personnel. About 28,500 US troops are stationed in South Korea.

â€œThis year is particularly important, because it is the first time the [South Korean] Joint Chiefs of Staff have planned and executed this combined exercise,â€ said US General James Thurman, head of the Combined Forces Command.

Pyongyang has condemned the joint maneuvers as a provocative invasion rehearsal and announced that effective on Monday, it was scrapping the 1953 armistice ending the Korean War and voiding peace pacts signed with the South.

The Southâ€™s Unification Ministry confirmed that the North appeared to have carried through on another promise to cut the hotline between Pyongyang and Seoul.

The two sides habitually speak twice a day, but â€œthe North did not answer our call this morning,â€ a spokesman for the Southâ€™s Unification Ministry said.

The hotline was installed in 1971 and the North has severed it on five occasions in the past most recently in 2010.
The Rodong Sinmun, the newspaper of the Northâ€™s ruling communist party, confirmed in Mondayâ€™s edition the â€œcomplete endâ€ of the armistice which halted the 1950-53 Korean War hostilities.

As the war concluded with a military armistice rather than a peace treaty, the two Koreas remain technically at war.

Sabre-rattling and displays of brinkmanship are nothing new in the region, but there are concerns that the current situation is so volatile that just one accidental step could escalate into serious confrontation and conflict.